Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Chris Hedges on the Costs of the Iraq War - Human Casualties, Troops, U.S. Financing (2007)

The October 2006 Lancet study estimated total excess deaths up to July 2006. Total deaths (civilian and non-civilian) include all additional deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.. The survey estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war. The 2006 study involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006. More households were surveyed than during the 2004 study, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. The result was disputed by President Bush, epidemiologists, demographers, the Iraq Body Count, and many others, based both on the number of deaths and the alleged methodology.[186]


Although the British Government initially tried to dispute the accuracy of the Lancet survey, the U.K. Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser wrote in an email on the day of publication that the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".[187] An October 12, 2006, San Francisco Chronicle article[188] reported: "Asked at the news conference what he thinks the number is now, Bush said: 'I stand by the figure a lot of innocent people have lost their life.' At a separate Pentagon briefing, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the [Lancet] figure 'seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don't give it that much credibility at all'."
John Tirman, who commissioned and directed the funding for the 2nd Lancet study,[189] and has reviewed various data and methodologies[190][191] has estimated "the number of war-related dead to be at least 600,000 and possibly as much as one million".[192] Tirman has praised as "most accurate"[193] the review published in Conflict and Health March 7, 2008, "Iraq War mortality estimates: A systematic review".

For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. A total of 4,486 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012.[13] Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less precise and less consistent. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media.
The word "casualties" in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualti...

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